Howard Bruce Raskin/Cornell University Library

Michael Cook (Mann), Angela Horne (Management), Lance Heidig (Olin and Uris), Jim Morris-Knower (Mann), Thomas Mills (Law), Eric Acree (Africana) and Fred Muratori (Olin and Uris) brainstorm ideas for implementing a campus-wide information literacy program.

Eighty percent of some 10,000 college students reported "overwhelming difficulty" picking a topic and figuring out where to start their research. Nearly half reported similar problems with concluding and evaluating the quality of their research.

The drive to address that difficulty and help students increase their skills led 38 Cornell librarians to participate in the Cornell Information Literacy Immersion Program, May 21-24.

Information literacy -- the ability to find, evaluate and effectively use information resources -- is recognized as one of seven essential learning outcomes outlined in the university's strategic plan.

To help upgrade the teaching of these crucial skills, Cornell University Library hosted an institution-specific version of the teaching workshop, which was created by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and geared toward instruction librarians and teaching staff.

This program marked the first time that faculty leading the teaching workshop and an institution worked together to deliver a custom program. The immersion program provided an opportunity for librarians from all over campus to learn more about the subject from the experts at ACRL without going beyond the Ag Quad.

Intensive hands-on workshops covered topics ranging from how to assess the effectiveness of an information literacy workshop to engaging students through active learning.

"From now on, I'm not going to make every library research session I teach a compilation of topics 'to cover,'" said engineering librarian Jeremy Cusker. "Rather, I'll consciously think about what I want students to learn -- really, what I want them to be able to do or how they should be changed by the experience -- and work backwards from there to decide what I should teach and how I should teach it."

The immersion program also helped the group strategize about how to create and maintain a cohesive, integrated, campuswide information literacy program -- that is also a key objective of the library's newly drafted strategic plan.

Jim Morris-Knower is an outreach and applied social sciences librarian at Cornell University Library.